Tuesday 22nd March 2005

I wonder if Sainsburys train their staff to be intrusive and to judge their customers by their purchases. This lunchtime I popped down to the proper non-local big Sainsburys in Chiswick. I do a proper supermarket shop very rarely, preferring to buy what I need for the next few days from my convenient Sainsburys Local (except for yoghurts, which as you know from here, I buy in bulk, though consume at the rate of a normal person). So when I go to the big Sainburys I tend to buy bulky items or large quantities of the things that are either unavailable in the smaller stores, or heavy and easier to transport in a car. Today I bought a large supply of cleaning stuff for my cleaner to clean my house with. This went through the check-out first. The check out lady didn't quite say "Someone likes cleaning" but it was words to that effect. She asked me if it would be me who would be using all these products. I said it wouldn't be. I could see her assuming that I was leaving it up to my wife to clean my house and she gave me a sour look. I didn't think I would go up in her estimation if I explained that in actual fact I had a cleaner.
I had purchased a few sports drinks for running/squash and she said "That'll give the person cleaning the energy to get through the job." This was rather presumptuous of her and she was wrong. If my cleaner started drinking my sports drinks I would be very annoyed.
I'd bought a couple of bottles of champagne and she then said, "There, that's to drink after all the cleaning is done." She was mapping out my life for me and I didn't care for it any more than on the notorious yoghurt occasion that still haunts me to this day. She gaily passed such comment on many of my items. But then a bumper pack of toilet roll was next on the trolley. Also I like the moist toilet tissue that Andrex now does, but it is often hard to find, so I had bought up all the available stock (about six packs). Given that she had started deciding how each of my purchases would be used, I was expecting her to comment on this large quantity and variety of bottom wiping equipment. But she just ignored it. Which was weird as even I had to admit that there was an inordinate amount of toilet tissue there and that that was the thing that was most worthy of comment. Given the fact that I make this very point in my yoghurt routine ("Someone likes shitting. Someone gets an unnatural interest in faecal matter passing through their anal passage and then wiping off the excess faeces with tissue paper. Is it a sexual interest? I believe the term is coprophilia, I don't know. It's you who does that not me.") this was more amusing to me. It certainly went unsaid that she was at least a bit embarrassed to have started something that had now taken such an unexpected turn. I was very tempted to chip in and ask her "So where does all this toilet tissue come into the fantasy scenario you have created?" But I didn't.
Ironically I had bought 12 yoghurts and she didn't say a thing about that.